Edison the scientist - Semantic Scholar€¦ · Edison the scientist John A. Eddy This year marks the 100th anniversary of Edison's invention of the electric lamp, one of many heralded

Edison the scientist

John A. Eddy

This year marks the 100th anniversary of Edison's invention of the electric lamp, one of many heralded ac-complishments that brought him lasting fame. For much of life Edison enjoyed a popular reputation as alaboratory genius who personified the spirit of scientific discovery. Was he really a scientist, or only an in-ventor? His participation in the Draper Expedition to the solar eclipse of 1878, told here, offers a chanceto evaluate the youthful Edison as an astronomer and infrared physicist.

Introduction

In 1973 we Americans saw the first photographsof the United States taken from a spacecraft on a clearnight when all the land was dotted with the glow ofelectric lights. Ocean boundaries were traced by stringsof lighted coastal cities, megapolitan areas fused to-gether in massed illumination, and scattered across thehinterland like fireflies were the lights of smaller towns.We could see our mark upon the planet and sense theElectric Age in which we live.

The photographs were also a reminder of a touchingtribute paid by lights in these same cities on an autumnevening forty-eight years ago, the night of 21 October1931. Following a suggestion by President Hoover,electric lamps in homes across the land were voluntarilyswitched off at ten o'clock, then on again-a silent signalin the night. As one ship dips its flag to the passing ofanother, the nation honored the passing of the fatherof our Electric Age, Thomas Alva Edison, who wasburied that day in New Jersey. At his death some hadsuggested that power stations should switch off elec-tricity momentarily everywhere, but so fitting a gesturehad long passed the point of practicability by 1931.Edison had created in his lifetime a system so literallyindispensable that it could not be turned off even for amoment.

He had lived eighty-four years, and for most of it wasa living legend: Edison, the Great Inventor, betterknown and more universally respected than any scien-tist of his day or ours. For nearly half a century it wasEdison who typified science in the minds of commonmen, and it was in part through his popularity andreputation that scientific endeavor had acquired aglorified name.

The author is with Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics,Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138.

Received 16 July 1979.0003-6935/79/223737-14$00.50/0.© 1979 Optical Society of America.

Fame came early into his life and stayed to the veryend. In 1877, at age 29 and with scores of other patentsto his credit, Edison gave the world the phonograph andwas a hero from that day on. Two years later came hisequally heralded work on the incandescent lamp andelectric power generation and distribution. In thosesame early years and before he was yet thirty, Edisonpioneered the concept of the modern research labora-tory, in a risky venture launched in two-story framebuildings put up in Menlo Park on borrowed money.Later, in a move equally bold and risky, he expandedinto a larger and grander research complex in brickbuildings at West Orange, New Jersey.

From these laboratories and from his remarkablemind flowed an impressive stream of technical advancesand improvements that drew upon almost all branchesof science, including chemistry, physics, astronomy,nearly all aspects of engineering, and even botany. Hisskills and knowledge in practical physics, where mostof his inventions lay, included not only electricity andmagnetism, but sound, heat, and light, mechanics,thermodynamics, telegraphy, telephony, and cinema-tography, IR radiation, and some early work in elec-tronics and radio waves. He was, among other things,an applied optician, at home with the microscopes,spectroscopes, and telescopes that were always a partof his working collection of laboratory equipment. Heknew the sun and the stars and called them by name.

Edison is remembered as a self-educated and self-made man, a lone genius who scorned formal educationand degrees and accolades, but even as a young man hehired and administered Ph.D.s and made presentationsbefore such societies as the Smithsonian Institution andthe American Academy of Sciences. In later years, heserved the same dreary sentences on national advisorycommittees in science and technology that drain crea-tive people of time and talent today. He was an advisorto the Navy on antisubmarine warfare in World War Iand played a major part in establishing the presentNaval Research Laboratory. He rubbed shoulders not

15 November 1979 / Vol. 18, No. 22 / APPLIED OPTICS 3737

only with industrialists, like Henry Ford, the Vander-bilts, and J. P. Morgan, but with the leading scientistsof his day, including Joseph Henry, Lord Kelvin, HenryDraper, Louis Pasteur, Bell, Marconi, and Langley, andloaned his test equipment, sometimes with regrets, toacademic scientists down the road at Princeton.

In later life Edison, like Einstein, produced far lessthan he did in the prolific years of his early professionallife. His contributions peaked well before he was forty,although he continued to drive himself and othersaround him in search of solutions until nearly the dayof his death. His failures-some of them financiallycatastrophic, like his heavy losses in magnetic mining,or his fruitless searches for synthetic rubber, or im-proved storage batteries-were notable features of hislater life. Thus the pattern of Edison's achievement,sad to say for most of us, fits the actuarial norm in sci-entific creativity, lending weight to the grim suspicionthat our real value in creative research, as in professionalsports, dies long before our ardor for the game.

We can learn lessons from Edison's successes andfrom his failures, for they are well documented. He wasin the game of research for a long time; he knew it well,and he wrote some of its rules. And most of us moreordinary scientists can still identify with him; if Edisonwas a genius, as so many thought, he was an underedu-cated one who never saw himself as uncommonly in-telligent. He recognized the gaps in his own knowledgebut was unafraid, when necessary, to enter almost anyarea. Then he would start, as we are taught today, bygathering together all the books he could understandon the subject; after learning all he could, Edison wouldbegin with the most basic fundamentals, proceedingfrom one empirical test to the next only after he hadunderstood every detail that had gone right or wrong.It was the hardest possible way to do research-andperhaps the only way to really succeed. As a practicalinventor he knew there was no point in trying to foolhimself or to gloss over any uncertainty however small.It demanded continuous attention and hard work. Hewas quick to admit that in his experience invention wasone part inspiration and ninety-nihe parts perspiration.And he was human enough to know how hard it is to givefull measure to that simple formula. "There is no ex-pedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the reallabor of thinking," Edison liked to say, attributing thequotation to Sir Joshua Reynolds.

QuestionsBut how much of a scientist was he? Or was he one

at all? Much has been written about Edison, andduring his life it was mostly adulation. Of late thebalance swings the other way: modern and moreskeptical analyses of his life and work have questionedhis style and methods, his attention to publicity, and hisprecedence to some discoveries, including that of theincandescent lamp. To scientists and engineers oftoday, Thomas Edison is remembered, if at all, for hisskill at cut and try: the inveterate empiricist, clever butformally ignorant, whose only trick in solving scientificproblems was trying everything within reach. For the

famous filament in 1879 it was first platinum, then ahost of other things-bamboo, fishline, coconut shells,human (fine red) hair, and finally eureka! Coates & Co.No. 29 cotton thread. "Mr. Edison, do you think therecould ever be an antigravity substance?" "I don't seewhy not," goes the apochryphal reply, "there are enoughthings to try."

Edison was certainly adept at handling publicity andthe press, for early on he had come to know how neces-sary they were to his successes. It was his modus op-erandi to secure funding for the considerable overheadof his research laboratories by announcing, a littleprematurely if need be, his inventions to the press andwith fanfare. So it was that in 1878, he announced thathe had solved the problem of the incandescent light.That was a year before he actually did it, in the face ofcompetition that had started on the knotty problemlong before he had, and with a good appreciation of howdifficult it would be. It was a move like that of BabeRuth, who stepped to the plate for all to see and pointedwhere he would next hit a home run. Some call thatbravado, others self-confidence; it was certainly one ofthe important differences between Thomas Edison andalmost all the other lesser-known inventors of his timeor ours.

Was Edison more than a clever confident tinkererwho happened along at just the right time? In the1870s and 1880s, when he did the things that made himfamous, modern technology was a coming wave, an in-evitable result of the Industrial Age that was destinedto break in time on the beaches of all the areas whereEdison worked. Did he do more than sense its pull andride it in? Had he stayed in telegraphy, his first loveand technical interest, would not others have comealong at about the same time with a talking machine, anincandescent lamp, movie camera, and all his other in-ventions? Was he the one that made it happen? Orwas Edison a nineteenth century Armstrong placed inpublic view upon the moon by accumulated works ofothers who had gone before and through a chance co-incidence of time and age and place?

These imponderables need not be answered here.What we can ask, and hope to answer, is whether Edisonwas indeed a scientist.

Scientist vs InventorWe shall need appropriate definitions of science and

scientists before we can measure Edison against eitherof them. In the 1870s, at the time of his early work, thepopular notion of science was much closer to technology;since then the popular definition has shifted from thepractical toward the profound. One can sense thechange by flipping through Omni magazine or, better,by comparing the articles found in Scientific Americantoday with those of the same magazine a century ago;then it dealt not so much with muons as with mowingmachines. Still, then as now, purists would probablyhave insisted that real scientists were those who soughtpure knowledge as opposed to practical solutions orpaying discoveries. Edison was assuredly a commercialinventor without academic affiliation, whose scientific

3738 APPLIED OPTICS / Vol. 18, No. 22 / 15 November 1979

papers were patent applications. In later years he wasan industrialist himself, heavily involved in the found-ing of the General Electric Company and a number ofother corporations of his own creation. Were his mo-tives at any time those of the pure scientists of today insearch of truth and truth alone? Edison answered thatone himself:

"I'm not a scientist. I'm an inventor. Faraday wasa scientist. He didn't work for money ... said hehadn't time to do so. But I do. I measure everythingI do by the size of the silver dollar. If it don't come upto that standard then I know it's no good."

I thought of these words of Edison while recentlysitting through two different project reviews for theNational Aeronautics and Space Administration. Ineach case the question that scientists discussed involvedthe sun and whether it seemed opportune to undertakea new thrust in a direction that would involve a seriesof manned and unmanned space flights over the nextten years. The meetings were described as scientificsymposia, but the crucial discussions dealt of necessitywith questions of cost and time and competitive ad-vantage in the real market of restricted new starts. Wewere asked to judge whether these proposed programs,weighed against others, would produce enough of valueto make them worth the professional investment andpublic costs. We heard how a proposed payload couldbe designed to fit sideways into the Space Shuttle tominimize the payload costs-now figured by the linearfoot of fore-and-aft cargo storage space. As seemsnecessary and prudent in planning any scientific effort,we measured everything by the size of the silver dollar,and if it did not come up to that standard, we knew itwas no good to proceed. As far as I could tell, all of usthere, like Edison and probably Faraday, worked formoney and indirectly stood to profit in one way or an-other by doing better work.

Edison and the AstronomersIn the spring and summer of 1878, when he was riding

high in private accomplishment and public acclaim,Edison made a brief excursion into astronomy and theesoteric world of what must be called pure science. Itwas an intended side trip-a diversion that neither tookhim long nor lured him to stay. But the unusual epi-sode tells of his interest at the time in the pursuit ofknowledge for knowledge's sake and reveals, I think, adesire in the young inventor to try some of the hiddendelights of the perfumed gardens of academia. In anycase it gives us occasion to take his measure as an as-tronomer and a pure scientist.

We find him in an unusual setting, in a different role,and in the company of academic scientists, offering achance to compare Edison directly against their stan-dard and on their ground. The press, who followed hisevery step, was quick to make these very comparisons;its accounts, though surely biased -in his favor, andEdison's own habit of keeping detailed records help toilluminate this unusual meeting of two worlds. Muchlater, as part of his memoirs, Edison recorded his im-pressions-not wholly favorable-of his distinguished

colleagues.The little-known episode deals with Edison's par-

ticipation as an IR astronomer in the Draper EclipseExpedition to Wyoming in 1878. It is well-timed for ourpurpose, for it samples the young Edison at the peak ofhis creative life, in a brief interlude sandwiched betweenthe phonograph (1877) and the incandescent lamp(1879). At the time he worked in the almost magicalatmosphere of his first laboratory complex in MenloPark with a hired staff of twelve loyal assistants: aCamelot where at thirty-one he was both King andMerlin.

On an April day in that year, Edison had taken thetrain to Washington to demonstrate his new phono-graph before learned institutions and the President ofthe United States. There he met an earlier friend andadmirer, Professor George F. Barker, a physicist of theUniversity of Pennsylvania. Barker urged Edison tojoin him on a rail trip to Wyoming Territory as part ofan expedition to observe the eclipse of the sun on 29 Julyat the place where the shadow path crossed the Conti-nental Divide. Leader of the expedition was Dr. HenryDraper of New York University. Edison was nostranger to Draper; they had corresponded earlier re-garding Draper's work on oxygen lines in the solarspectrum. Edison, who kept a spectroscope in hislaboratory, was interested at the time in the shape ofspectral lines and had written Draper with questions onthe subject.

To Edison, as to many of us today, the lure of theeclipse lay mostly in the travel and adventure involved,and it was through this guise that Barker offered hisinvitation: here was a chance to see the West on thenew Transcontinental Railway and to take a neededvacation. Edison agreed on this basis, but soon electedto take along one of the new inventions on which he wasthen working. It was an electromechanical IR detector,and with it he proposed to measure the heat of the solarcorona: a bold challenge indeed! Edison's IR detector,which he called the tasimeter, had been in his mindabout a year and in his laboratory in breadboard formfor some months. The preceding autumn he hadwritten Samuel P. Langley about it.

Langley (Fig. 2), himself a man of diverse interests,was then Director of the Allegheny Observatory inPittsburgh and just beginning his pioneering studies ofthe IR radiation of the sun that led to later measure-ments of'the solar constant. He recognized, as muchas any scientist of his day, that it was detectors that heldup progress in the new field of ultrared, as it was thencalled. Langley, surprised or possibly amused by Ed-ison's query, delayed in sending an answer. When hedid, more than a month later, he included with his replyone of his more sensitive thermopiles, then the best ofthe IR detectors, and with it a challenge: if (Edison)

"could make something in the same compass, say 100times as sensitive, equally prompt, and capable ofbeing uninfluenced by alien radiations, he would notperhaps produce anything commercially paying, butyou certainly would confer a precious gift onscience. "


moreover, he probably released it to the higher branchesas e of science to put it to roost-for it was, after all, some-

thing of a turkey.

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Fig. 2. Samuel Pierpont Langley, 1834-1906, from an early portrait(courtesy Smithsonian Institution Archives).

Between the lines we read Langley's assessment of theyoung inventor's motivation: that Edison proposed toenter the field of IR, not for the pure reasons thatLangley held but to make a profit. With this came theostensibly impossible challenge to increase the sensi-tivity of state-of-the-art detectors by 2 orders of mag-nitude! It was the sort of staggering assignment thatfathers of princesses in storybooks throw out to pro-spective suitors to put them out of the way.

Edison took it up, in part perhaps because he likedchallenges and particularly ones that came, as this onedid, from the ivory halls of academic research. Thusstarted one episode of his research career that seemswholly uncommercial. He may have been goaded inthis direction by Langley's barb. In any case, Edisonnever applied for a patent on the tasimeter; that, forhim, was unusual indeed. Much later, in his authorizedbiography by Dyer, Martin, and Meadowcroft, thetasimeter was described as follows:

"this interesting device is one of Edison's many in-ventions not generally known to the public, chieflybecause its application has been limited to the higherbranches of science. He never applied for a patent onthe instrument but dedicated it to the public."

As we shall see, the astute Edison had other reasonsfor failing to push for patent claims on the tasimeter;

Edison's TasimeterThe tasimeter had come to life in a typically Edi-

sonian way: not through any determined effort todiscover what was eventually found nor through purechance or serendipity. Rather he arrived at it througha chain of loosely linked discoveries that led himthrough several fields, which he was willing to followhand over hand wherever it took him. He could notalways afford this kind of free adventure or the diver-sion from other specific assignments, but when he foundhimself upon this course he was at his very best. It wasa style of research that fitted Edison well because of hisbreadth and imagination, his freedom from disciplinaryboundaries, and his dogged determination to track downevery detail in any of his experiments.

In 1873 Edison was working on schemes to speed uptelegraphic transmission in the Atlantic cable. Toduplicate in his laboratory the electrical resistance ofthe 3000-mile cable, he had experimented with a vari-able resistor made of compressed powdered graphiteand had noted the marked electrical sensitivity ofpowdered carbon to pressure. Four years later, whileworking on ways of improving Bell's telephone, Edisonrecalled his Atlantic cable experience and adoptedcompressed carbon as a telephone transmitter material;thus was born his "carbon button" telephone. Therewas a problem, however. The hard-rubber telephonemouthpiece was then handheld; heat from the handtransmitted as pressure to the carbon button producedloud static on the telephone line. He first tried to avoidthe problem by switching to a cast-iron mouthpiece; thisonly changed the character of the noise, producingcreaky sounds that he attributed to (thermal) motionsof iron molecules, which he called "molecular music."

Edison realized he was being beaten in the telephonegame by thermal expansion. Given a lemon he madelemonade. For here was a new device that transformedtemperature to resistance: a sensitive heat detectorwith a readout in the realm of electrical measurementwhere he was master. It could be made to detect radi-ant heat by putting the carbon button in mechanicalcontact with an expandable rod on which heat was fo-cused. He could make it supersensitive by placing thebutton in one leg of a bridge circuit. To be sure therewere a few mechanical details to be worked out andmaterials to be tried, but the principles were easily inhis grasp. This much he knew when he wrote ProfessorLangley to offer a gift to science. Who cared that it wasnot at first appreciated? Another of nature's wily sig-nals-this time heat-had wandered into the jaws ofone of his traps, and he had it by the hind leg.

To the final instrument Edison added a small conicalhorn to focus heat and a dial to record compression,presumably for calibration. For the expandable rod hechose vulcanite-the same material that had caused theoriginal problems in the telephone transmitter. Thefinished instrument was made of machined brass and


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Fig. 3. (a) Edison's tasimeter of 1878, as it is preserved for display at the Edison Institute, Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn, Michigan (courtesyHenry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village). (b) A woodcut of the same instrument from Am. J. Sci. 117, 52 (1879). The horn is about 7cm in diameter. A is a cylindrical rod of hard rubber (vulcanite) that absorbs thermal radiation, expands, and compresses the carbon button

C.

was small enough to be held in the hand. A photo andcontemporary woodcut are shown in Fig. 3.

In principle of operation the tasimeter was not unlikea thermometer or the modern Golay cell: in each, theexpansion or contraction of an absorbing material in-dicates a net heat flow between the detector and itsenvironment. As a class, such detectors are slower andgenerally less responsive than those that measure anonmechanical effect of heat such as the thermopile ormodern semiconductor detectors. Edison undoubtedlyappreciated the principle of the more elegant thermo-pile, but experience had taught him that the simplerway was often better.

That the tasimeter was accidentally conceived andrather casually born did not deter Edison from givingit a proper and fitting name. Preserved in the Archivesof the Edison National Historic Site in his careful handare lists of fourteen candidate names-largely permu-tations of the words micro, thermo, carbo, electro, andmeter. Edison selected the most esoteric of the list andlater explained his choice:

"This instrument I have named the tasimeter fromthe Greek words -raat, extension, and uerpov, mea-sure, because primarily the effect is to measure ex-tension of any kind."

The tasimeter lived as an instrument but a year ortwo. As a word it was kept around for fully eighty yearsafter its brief life had ended, eventually embalmed asa common noun in successive editions of the Merriam-Webster unabridged dictionary. In 1961 Edison'shandmade word finally disappeared in the house-cleaning that accompanied publication of the ThirdNew International Edition.

It was one thing to concoct an instrument whoseelectrical properties would change in a measurable waywith temperature; it was quite another to isolate it fromambient changes and unwanted signals. Edison con-sidered encasing the tasimeter in an ice-filled enclosureor, later, one filled with boiling water; but he never dideither. Instead the time he could allocate to the tasi-meter was spent in electrical refinements and demon-strations.

To sense the minute change in resistance of the car-bon button he employed a Wheatstone bridge, then incommon laboratory use. He also needed a delicate in-dicating galvanometer, and for this Edison chose themost sensitive one available: the mirror galvanometerinvented by Sir William Thomson in the course of hisown work on the Atlantic cable twenty years before. InFig. 4, from Scientific American, we see the breadboardtasimeter system including the tripod mounted galva-nometer and its kerosene reference lamp.

An obvious measure of merit of the tasimeter was itsability to sense heat or IR radiation-its "sensitivity"in the words of Langley. To the scientist of 1878, sen-sitivity was expressed quantitatively as the minimumdetectable change in detector temperature. The bulbthermometers used by William Herschel in 1800 in hisearly searches of the IR probably could detect a mini-mum change of 10-1-10-21F. The first thermopile(used by Melloni in 1830) had a sensitivity of roughly10-30F. In 1877 Langley's best thermopile probablycould detect 10-40 F. Thus, to better existing detectorsEdison needed to demonstrate sensitivity better than10-40F and, to meet Langley's challenge, 10-60 F.

Edison's early claim for the tasimeter for 1/24,0000 F


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Fig. 4. An early breadboard version of the tasimeter [from Sci. Am. 38, 385 (1878)]. The Thomson galvanometer is at right with lamp andscale at upper center; elements of the Wheatstone bridge are at left. The tasimeter at bottom right has the vulcanite rod mounted horizontally.

The horn model was finished only two days before Edison left for Wyoming.

in the late spring of 1878. In the next few months itssensitivity, as documented in newspaper reports, im-proved at a most incredible rate. In May, newspapercorrespondents were told that the instrument was ca-pable of detecting 1/50,0000 F and "will register heatinfluences smaller by thousands of divisions than anythat have yet been registered." In July on the eve of hisdeparture for the eclipse, Edison announced from therail platform that with the tasimeter "it will be possibleto measure the 1/500,000 part of a degree, and do it ac-curately," adding that "it will measure any degree ofheat that can be measured." Later in July to corre-spondents in the West, he proclaimed that the tasimetercould indeed measure 10-6°F-meeting the goal pro-posed by Langley seven months before. And in Sep-tember, writing to a prospective user in Germany, Ed-ison confided that "the delicacy of the instrument isinfinite." We may only conjecture whether the im-provement with time was real and indeed whether Ed-ison ever made a quantitative measurement of thetasimeter's sensitivity.

More to Edison's taste were qualitative demonstra-tions of the instrument (Fig. 5). In this he was mas-terful. A typical demonstration began with the tasi-meter connected to an ordinary meter galvanometer, theThomson galvanometer being held. in reserve for laterin the show. Marked meter deflections were producedwith the horn directed at Edison's little finger 4 in.away, a match at 6 in., or a lighted candle at 10 ft. TheThomson galvanometer was then connected, endowingthe tasimeter with almost unmanageable sensitivity. Ina still room, the heat of the hand 30 ft away wouldplainly deflect the mirror galvanometer, sweeping thelantern beam across the numbered scale. In a more

competitive mood Edison would demonstrate that thetasimeter, with conventional galvanometer, was 6 timesmore sensitive to heat from his little finger than athermopile was to a red-hot iron. Perhaps the mostexpressive testimony given the tasimeter was thatwritten by a Wyoming newspaper correspondent:

"It is so sensitive that let a person come into theroom with a lighted cigar, and it will drive the littleanimal wild."

Astronomers grew more interested. In early June,Langley offered to test the tasimeter at Allegheny Ob-servatory and asked Edison to send him one, along withspecimen carbon buttons whose absorptivity he wishedto measure. Langley's interest was in taking IR spectra:he was extremely anxious to secure a detector smallenough for use at the spectrum image plane and askedEdison if the tasimeter could be made small for spectrallines. By 22 June, Langley had received only the carbonbuttons and reminded Edison of the "promised tasi-meter which I shall have great pleasure in testing." Inthe same letter, Langley, apparently unaware of Edi-son's own plans for taking the tasimeter to the coming29 July eclipse, proposed the same experiment:

"I expect to go in the beginning of July, to observethe solar eclipse; if the tasimeter arrived this monthI might perhaps be able to put it to practical trial atonce in eclipse work."

Langley planned to take advantage of a truly uniqueeclipse path to observe from the top of Pike's Peak,14,100 ft above sea level, where the IR transparency wascertain to be good. Edison apparently agreed to fillLangley's request but with a procrastination that ex-asperated the older scientist. The young and popularEdison was at the time already overcommitted, under


Fig. 5. A youthful Edison, seated, center, demonstrates the tasimeter to the press, using his hand as a heat source [from Scribner's Monthly17, 88 (1878)].

constant pressure by visitors, the press, his creditors,and a steady stream of mail with requests for this orthat. His hands were in many different enterprises,among which the tasimeter was but a recreation and theeclipse a coming vacation. The methodical dedicatedLangley operated in a wholly different style and sawthings differently. He had observed the 1870 eclipsein Spain and knew the amount of preparation neededto ensure success. He had some notion of the difficultyof establishing himself on top of Pike's Peak. On 4 Julythere was still no tasimeter in the mail from Menlo Park.On the next day, with less than four weeks until theeclipse and only three days until his own departure,Langley sent a terse telegram to Edison: "Send byexpress to Allegheny. I leave Monday."

Langley left without it. From the summit of thegreat mountain he watched the sun eclipsed and, alongwith other experiments, attempted to measure coronalheat with another detector but without success. Itseems unlikely that Edison willfully withheld a tasi-meter from Langley, although Langley may have sus-pected this, particularly when the inventor continuedto stall him long after the eclipse was over. Fifteenmonths later, while perfecting his new bolometer,Langley was still asking Edison, apparently withoutsuccess, for a tasimeter to test.

Also interested in the tasimeter for possible use in theeclipse was the prominent Princeton astronomer,Charles A. Young, a frequent visitor at Menlo Park anda scientist whom Edison knew and trusted. Afterlearning of the tasimeter, Young built one himself,making his own carbon buttons. By early June thePrinceton tasimeter was only partially successful.Young informed Edison that he had been experimenting"pretty successfully" with the "heat measurer" without

getting "quite all we want out of it" and asked him forone or two of his special buttons. He did not know,apparently, that Edison's carbon buttons came in factfrom the work of his night watchmen, who pressedcarbon scraped from lamp chimneys into simple molds(Fig. 6). Young planned to observe the eclipse in Col-orado with varied spectroscopic apparatus, includinga grating spectroscope for the IR chromospheric andcoronal spectrum.

On 1 July, the day before the Princeton expeditionleft for the West, Young received a tasimeter from Ed-ison. It was probably the second that had ever beenbuilt. Tests in the field near Denver soon convincedYoung that it would be impractical to employ the Edi-son tasimeter for the eclipse; it was altogether too sen-sitive to movement of the equatorially mounted spec-troscope on which it was to be used. The only hope wasto redesign the entire apparatus, replacing the equato-rial mounting with a coelostat mirror system andmounting the tasimeter on a firm base; but there was notime for so drastic a change. Young decided to use in-stead a backup thermopile, laying the tasimeter aside.The press was quick to paint the incident colorfully, asevidence of the practical inventor's superior abilities:"The instrument was too new to succeed in other hands,even those of Professor Young."

Expedition at RawlinsWhen Edison made his departure for the eclipse the

New York press were there to see him off. That nightthe Daily Graphic devoted its whole front page to Ed-ison and the tasimeter, with an account of the solar ex-periment he would perform, the results he expected, anda popular description with a full-size illustration of the


Fig. 6. Nightwatchmen in Edison's Menlo Park Laboratory scrape carbon from lamp chimneys to make carbon buttons for telephones ortasimeters [from Scribner's Monthly 17, 88 (1878)].

instrument. Evening readers learned that the tasimeterwas in some respects "the most remarkable of all hisdiscoveries, and his one which, had he invented nothingelse, would have made him famous in the world ofscience." His parting words at the station were alsogiven:

"Yes, said Thomas Edison, as he stood on the plat-form of the Pennsylvania railroad depot on Saturdayevening, about to start with the Draper observingparty, it will measure any degree of heat that can bemeasured. If the Sun's corona has any heat of its ownor possesses any heat reflecting power the tasimeterwill measure it accurately."

It was the sort of glaring prepublicity which few as-tronomers have ever received, which fewer still wouldever want, but which Edison had come to enjoy and putto good advantage. It was indeed the combination ofthis great knack of showmanship with innate ability thathad made him both famous and successful. It was onlynatural that Tom Edison would announce his astro-nomical results three weeks before the moon hadeclipsed the sun.

The publicity given the inventor and his experimentdid not end at the station in New York. Throughoutthe trip he was accompanied by a special correspondentof The New York Herald, his friend, Marshall Fox. Ateach stop along the way, other newspapermen waitedto greet the great inventor, as did the railroad telegra-phers, who knew of Edison's early start in their trade

and held him proudly as their own. On the trip Edisoncarried letters from the Union Pacific Railroad Com-pany, which introduced him as "Mr. Edison, the cele-brated inventor and telegrapher," giving authorizationfor his free passage and directions to "send all messagesof Mr. Thomas A. Edison free."

Rawlins, Wyoming Territory, in the eclipse path, hadbeen chosen by Draper for his expedition because of itsdirect access by rail. It was a frontier railroad town,nine years old, with about 800 persons and one hotel.We cannot be surprised that the astronomers who camethere for the eclipse were looked upon with awe andconsidered "wise men from the East." Edison surelyrelished these associations and later kept on his librarywall a group photograph taken against a backdrop oftelescopes and wooden sheds in Rawlins (Fig. 7).

Edison had no degrees and had written nothing. Hewas at least ten years younger and far less experiencedthan Langley or any of the other astronomers at Rawl-ins, yet it was Edison and not they who was met withcrowds wherever he went. Upon the uneducated in-ventor the press quickly bestowed the cherished titlesof academia: "Professor Edison accompanied by aparty of scientists...." We can imagine their looks andfeelings and sympathize perhaps with their final retal-iation: in the 1878 scientific eclipse report-a massivetome of 500 pages published by the Naval Observa-tory-Edison's name is nowhere to be found, as thoughto even the score.


Fig. 7. Edison (second from right) at Rawlins for the 29 July 1878 solar eclipse. J. N. Lockyer is at far right, Henry Draper on Edison's right,

and G. F. Barker at the extreme left. The objective end of Edison's telescope protrudes from the small dark shed in the center of the picture;

it was an instrument much like the other refractors in the foreground. (Photo courtesy Edison National Historic Site.)

The opposite side of the coin-Edison's feelingstoward the scientists and formal education in gen-eral-is better preserved, in opinions he freely gave inlater years:

"I wouldn't give a penny for the ordinary collegegraduate, except those from institutes of technology... they aren't filled up with Latin, philosophy, and allthat ninny stuff."

His especial disdain was directed at theoretical ormathematical physicists, who seemed to typify dreamydilettantes in ivory towers. In Edison's pragmatic mindthere was no question as to the relative worth of theo-retical vs practical science: "I can hire mathematiciansat $15.00 a week, but they can't hire me."

Edison took interest in the preeclipse work of theastronomers at Rawlins and found amusement in theirefforts to determine their precise position:

"It seemed to take an immense amount of mathe-matics. I preserved one of the sheets which looked likea timetable of a Chinese railroad."

One astronomer who sought Edison out was J. Nor-man Lockyer, editor and founder of the British journal,Nature, and a famous solar physicist. Lockyer had

followed Edison's work and had attempted to visit himat Menlo Park en route to Wyoming. He was especiallykeen to entice the young inventor to announce his futurediscoveries in Nature. Impressed with Edison and thetasimeter, Lockyer developed a kind of summerfriendship with the inventor and became the third as-tronomer, after Young and Langley, to secure fromEdison the promise of a tasimeter. Three nights beforethe eclipse, he watched (and probably helped) Edisontest the instrument on Arcturus. With telescope andtasimeter directed at the star, Edison achieved "fiveuniform and successive deflections" on the Thomsongalvanometer; moreover, when a dark slide was inserted,the instrument returned to zero. The next day Lockyersent the following message to Nature:

"One of the many points of interest here to me hasbeen the Observatory in which Mr. Edison has beenexperimenting on his tasimeter. It is truly a wonderfulinstrument, and from the observations made last nighton the heat of Arcturus, it is quite possible that he maysucceed in his expectations. For its extreme delicacyI can personally vouch. The instrument, however, isso young, that doubtless there are many pitfalls to bediscovered. Mr. Edison, however, is no unwary ex-perimenter."

Though well known and enough respected to be later


knighted, Lockyer was himself a controversial characterof no small ego. "And Lockyer, And Lockyer/Getscockier, And cockier/For he thinks he's the Owner/Ofthe solar corona" went a limerick republished in one ofhis obituaries. We can understand why he and Edison,with tastes so similar, hit it off so well, particularly whenthey were clearly not in competition. Still, we mustaccept Lockyer's pursuit of the young inventor and hislaudatory words about him as a measure of what theeditor of a major scientific journal thought of Edison asa scientist.

EclipseThose who have dared to test themselves at solar

eclipses will know some of Edison's feelings on the af-ternoon of 29 July as the moon moved inexorably tocover the last crescent of the sun. Some will sense itespecially keenly if ever they, like Edison, were not quiteready.

He stood alone in the doorway of an old henhouse, toprotect his all-too-delicate apparatus from Wyoming'sincessant winds-the heralded tasimeter and associatedcircuitry attached to a tripod-mounted refractor,pointed at the sky. As the last glint of sunlight van-ished and stars appeared, Edison worked feverishly tobring the balky tasimeter and Wheatstone bridge to theneeded null that would not come.

Darkness increased. Time ticked by. Totality atRawlins-Edison's moment of truth in astronomy-would last less than 3 min. Nature would grant nostays, even to the world's greatest inventor, and nosecond chance. In that brief time, fast slipping by, hewould have at most one shot to prove himself and thetasimeter, not only to the scientists who worked aroundhim, but to a waiting, watching world, for through hishabits of prior press emphasis he must now do it in thefull glare of public attention.

Just before totality ended Edison finally succeededin balancing the Wheatstone bridge and, shooting fromthe hip, pointed the telescope at the inner corona. Thespot of light on the Thomson galvanometer raced off theend of the scale. Then the sun burst out and the eclipsewas over. Edison stepped out into the growing light ofday. He had done what he said he would do and to aneager press announced success. He had detected a heatsignal at least 15 times stronger from the corona thanfrom Arcturus.

Newspapers were quick to bestow the distinction ofdiscovery upon the inventor in the next day's headlinesand in articles for months to come. The Times (ofLondon) announced to British readers that Edison "themodern magician" had measured the heat of the coronaand that he had "perplexed many, including some of theastronomical elect." Henry Draper telegraphed NewYork on the day of the eclipse that "Edison's tasimetergave decided indications of heat in the corona."

Edison himself, though cautious at first, came moreand more to accept his own hasty measurement and insubsequent press interviews left no doubt that he hadin fact detected heat from the diffuse corona, ninety-three million miles away. As to whether he was first,

he was accustomed to precedence in everything he did,though in this case he left that to the academic experts.His friend Professor Barker made it clear that "thiseclipse is the first in which any attempt has been madeto measure the heat of the solar corona." Just as readyto confer the honors of discovery on Edison was NormanLockyer, who in a posteclipse dispatch to his journal,Nature, had written that "for the first time thermo-electric observation forms part of eclipse work."Lockyer's unbridled feelings are more apparent in an-other dispatch which he sent to London's DailyNews:

"The daring genius of Edison has left its mark onthis eclipse. So soon as he had completed his tasi-meter he saw its applicability to eclipse work in de-termining the presence of heat waves in the radiationfrom the corona. I had the rare privilege of seeing thegreat inventor at work gradually increasing the sen-sitiveness of his wonderful instrument with the mostconsummate knowledge of principles and contempt forelaboration, until at length during the eclipse he wasrewarded by seeing a speck of light on the attachedgalvanometer give a decided swing from its zero on thedark moon when the image of the corona was broughton the fine slit in the plate which shielded the tasi-meter from its surroundings."

The more careful Charles Young politely pointed outthe true precedence of Edison's measurement in hissummary paper on the eclipse: "Experiments with thetasimeter ... of Mr. Edison showed, as was ascertainedmany years ago, that the heat of the corona is quitesensible." Young's reference was undoubtedly to ameasurement made at the eclipse of 7 July, 1842, fiveyears before Edison was born. At Milan, ProfessorLuigi Magrini, with a thermopile and a reflecting tele-scope, had detected a strong heat signal from the corona,which he observed throughout totality. In reportingthe results Magrini also noted that no heat radiation wasreceived with the same system directed at the moon atfull phase. Magrini's measurement was published intwo journals at the time, one in French and one inGerman, but in 1878 Magrini's result was probablyknown only to the most scholarly astronomers.

Critical AssessmentEdison's heralded measurement, though a personal

victory, was thus no discovery at all and of little valueto science. Perhaps this was why he and Barker, wholater prepared a paper for him describing the instru-ment, never did more with it. Edison soon became to-tally submerged in problems of the incandescent lampand electric power, and the Wyoming experience waspushed aside and later used only as fodder for remi-niscences. It is a pattern that we can recognize today.In fact, without ever realizing it, Edison proved to be arather typical eclipse goer. He postponed seriouspreparations until shortly before leaving on the expe-dition, elected to defer final assembly and tests until hearrived at the eclipse site, and never reduced his dataor published his findings. In this case it leaves no doubtas to what his real motives were: the eclipse was an


adventure and his coronal experiment a stunt-not atitle bout but an exhibition match to prove himself andthe tasimeter.

Although he never did it himself, it seems of somehistorical interest to establish whether Edison did in-deed measure the feeble IR radiation from the corona(now known to be a poor emitter) and whether his"wonderful instrument" really met its advertised sen-sitivity of 10- 6 0 F.

Several years ago, to answer these questions, I re-analyzed Edison's measurements made in 1878, usingwhat we now know of the corona, what I could recon-struct of theoretical properties of his refractor, and therecorded details of the Rawlins measurement, from hisown notes and from newspapers. As a relative cali-bration point I could use his observation, attested byLockyer, of Arcturus, whose near IR radiance we nowknow. Though we can never know where in the coronahis telescope was directed, the deflection achieved fallsnicely within the range of expected values. Thus we canconclude that Edison did indeed sense near IR coronalradiation in 1878.

The detection of Arcturus enables us to establish ina way that he could not the absolute sensitivity of thetasimeter. Near IR and visible radiation from the starwould have deposited about 1.7 X 10-8 W on the tasi-meter; from the known dimensions and thermal prop-erties of the vulcanite rod we can show that this shouldhave raised its temperature about 3.8 X 10-70 C or 0.7X 10-60 F. With this, according to Lockyer, Edisonachieved "five uniform and successive deflections" ofthe Thomson galvanometer. The sensitivity of thetasimeter was thus every bit as good as his claim.Though not inclined to the mathematical drudgery ofquantitative calibrations, Edison's uncanny intuitionseemed to make such steps unneeded, giving him a li-cense to boast that one must respect.

End of the TasimeterFor a time the tasimeter seemed destined to fulfill its

vaunted destiny and so to make a place for its maker inthe halls of pure research. Fueled by a generous press,interest in the device grew, and with it grew Edison'sown plans for its future in astronomy.. In a most in-teresting interview in Scientific American a monthfollowing the eclipse Edison laid out his strategy for thefuture of the amazing little instrument: he planned toattach the tasimeter to a large telescope and to explorethose parts of the heavens that appear blank, and thus"to detect by their invisible radiation stars which areunseen and unseeable." Infrared maps of the sky madein recent years have shown the wisdom of Edison'sprediction and have proved the existence of IR sources.The editors of Scientific American were caught up inthis enthusiasm and proclaimed that "a new agent ororgan of scientific sense for space exploration has beengiven to the world by the tasimeter." Astronomersurged Edison to turn the tasimeter on the night skywithout delay, initially on the planets, to determine ifany were self-luminous.

Edison had suggested many nonastronomical uses for

the detector: to measure wind, to weigh infinitesimalobjects (he had demonstrated its use in weighing a gnat),to test the compressibility of substances, to determinethe electrical conductivity of different materials underpressure, to detect fire in a ship's hold, and to warn ofthe presence of icebergs. In this last application, Edi-son proposed that the tasimeter be attached in the bilgeto the inner surface of the ship's metal keel, to sense thepresence of icebergs through their conductive coolingeffects on surrounding seawater. Surely an iceberg-even a distant one-would cool the surrounding oceanby 10-6oF! The system as Edison envisioned it wouldbe completely automatic with a wire running from thetasimeter on the keel directly to a bell in the captain's.cabin. This patently impractical scheme aroused theinterest of the shipping industry, and, as late as De-cember 1879, the White Star Line was still pressingEdison to adapt the tasimeter for iceberg detection inits ships.

The inventor was not alone in thinking up uses for thetasimeter, with its ability to detect a temperaturechange of one millionth of a degree Fahrenheit. Un-solicited suggestions came from near and far. In marinenavigation the tasimeter was suggested as an IR sextantto take sunsights through clouds. In meteorology thetasimeter was proposed as the ultimate measurer ofwind speed and of delicate changes in atmospherictemperature and pressure. A physician suggested itsuse in detecting minuscule changes in body tempera-ture, which might signal the onset of disease. Variousengineering uses were offered: to detect friction inmechanical devices, as an automatic governor to signalthe overheating of an engine, and so on. Other useswere suggested in chemical research and in miningtechnology.

Edison modified the tasimeter at one point to convertit to a "moisture tester" on the basis of evaporativecooling, and for this application he replaced the vul-canite rod with one of gelatin. With this modificationhe found he could detect damp paper at a distance of 3in., a drop of water on the tip of the finger at 5 in., andwater in a bottle held nearby. He was also intriguedwith the potential uses of the device as an "odorometer,"and he liked to demonstrate the ability of the tasimeterto sense the presence of perfume spilled on the floor.

Through all of this there were no moves at MenloPark to patent it or to exploit the tasimeter commer-cially before endowing it, as later announced, to science,although at this time Edison's full attention was neededfor work on the incandescent lamp. Transfer of thetasimeter to "the higher branches of science" was ef-fected in the end by giving rights of manufacture to twoinstrument manufacturers: John Browning in Londonand Partrick and Carter in Philadelphia. From whatwe can gather of the agreement, Edison was to receiveno royalty or fees in either case and, moreover, wouldprovide each manufacturer with carbon buttons.Browning, a highly respected scientific instrumentmaker of England, promised in return to exhibit thetasimeter at the soirees of the principal scientific so-cieties in Europe and to further honor the inventor by


engraving on each instrument "Edison's tasimeter madeby John Browning."

Arrangements with the American manufacturer,Partrick and Carter, were less dignified and more in-triguing. Partrick and Carter dealt in railroad andtelegraph supplies, and judging from their freneticcorrespondence with Edison, they found the tasimetera challenge indeed. It is quite possible that Edison'schoice of this unlikely company to build the potentiallyprofitable instrument was made to relieve a debt thathe owed the firm. The Philadelphia company beganby sending circulars of advertisement to every collegein the country, referring technical questions to Edison,since they could have known little of its characteristics.In six months they had interested, among others, J. W.Gibbs, but had sold only one instrument with "three orfour bites." Then, as now, the commercial producersfound the college market slow to buy but quick to bor-row-a situation which did not improve Edison's per-sonal opinions of academe. We may sense his mood inhis terse response to a letter from Robert College, Is-tanbul, which had asked for a gift tasimeter in Sep-tember 1879: "I have no tasimeter now. Made a dozenand gave them to colleges."

To the dismay of John Browning and the disgust ofPartrick and Carter, the tasimeter never sold. CharlesYoung and Samuel Langley, who knew it best, hadabandoned hope in the instrument soon after theeclipse. Lord Rosse, who had published work on the IRradiance of the moon and who was perhaps the leadingIR astronomer of the day, examined the tasimeter inIreland in October 1878, spending several hours makingexperiments with it. Rosse found the instrument sen-sitive but noted that its return was slow and somewhatuncertain. We can still feel the chill in his partingcomment to Edison's agent, W. F. Barrett, who hadshown the device to the renowned astronomer; Barrettcould come again when he had "more thoroughly mas-tered the instrument."

The trouble with the tasimeter was that, although itwas very sensitive, it was nothing else. It was erraticand difficult to use. Its response was very slow. It gavenonrepeatable results. It was a nonquantitative device,entirely too delicate and touchy to be of practical use.The heralded sensitivity of the tasimeter was itself adrawback; especial care was required in using the in-strument to exclude the effects of changing backgroundor mechanical vibration, as Young had so early noted.Physicists and astronomers understandably insistedthat the detection of weak thermal sources requiredrepeated quantitative confirmation, a capability emi-nently lacking in the supersensitive tasimeter. Perhapsonly the master himself could operate the instrument.J. C. Simpson of Reading, England in a letter to a pop-ular journal in 1878 told of his experiences in operatinga tasimeter made from Edison's model: he found theinstrument extremely sensitive to touch, to mechanicalmounting, to rigidity. Movements of the needle wereerratic after once having been deflected. The meterdeflection did not fall back gradually to the startingpoint as one would expect of a reliable instrument but

kept on describing various arcs, up and down, with nosort of method or regularity. With the application ofsudden heat, Simpson found that the needle movedforward a little, then stalled, then moved more rapidly:an indication of a nonlinear and slow detector. Inominous words Simpson concluded that "at present itappears to be more of an indicator than a measurer ofpressure-a tasiscope rather than a tasimeter."

The tasimeter was after all a lecture hall device-splendid for parlor demonstration but unsuited for ac-curate physical measurement. Langley was quick tohighlight this distinction when two years later he per-fected an IR detector of a different sort: the bolom-eter:

"There is probably no instrument in the whole rangeof scientific apparatus which demands a longer expe-rience for its successful use .. . where we are employingit not for the purpose of a lecture experiment, but forthe determination of some one almost infinitesimalradiation in the midst of numberless others which ouronly concern with, is to avoid."Langley's bolometer, which is still in use today, wasoriginally less sensitive than the tasimeter but smaller,faster, and more repeatable. In announcing his in-vention Langley omitted explicit mention of Edison orthe tasimeter, but there is little doubt to whom Langleyreferred when he wrote in introduction:

"I, therefore, tried to invent something more sensi-tive than the thermopile, which should be at the sametime equally accurate-which should, I mean, be es-sentially a "meter" and not a mere indicator of thepresence of feeble radiation. This distinction is aradical one. It is not difficult to make an instrumentfar more sensitive to radiation than the present, if itis for use as an indicator only; but what the physicistwants, and what I have consumed nearly a year of ex-perimenting trying to supply, is something more thanan indicator-a measurer of radiant energy."

The sudden demise of the tasimeter and the goodreasons for it were surely known to its maker, who hadlittle more to do with the instrument until the settingdown of his memoirs some thirty years later. There hemust have thoroughly enjoyed the irony in dedicatingthe device, without patent or further claim, to the di-lettantes in the higher branches of science.

Final AssessmentMost of us in modern research may not like what

Edison thought of our work or appreciate his unortho-dox style. Nor would I, for one, have wanted to conductan eclipse experiment beside him in the field. Yet inhis brief adventure in astronomy, he measured up well,I think, as a scientist. The assessments of Lockyer andDraper and Young, who saw him closest and measuredhim best, must be honored: each tells us that he con-sidered the young Edison a colleague in science andworthy of the name. That he was a good experimen-talist none could deny. Through alertness and in theprocess of other work he chanced upon a tool thatseemed at the time to offer promise in a number of sci-entific disciplines. He had the imagination to recognize


its potential and the cleverness and drive to harness itand to make it known. He put his new tasimeter to testin the most trying crucible, with his reputation on theline. Through his own skill and dexterity and a littlebit of luck, Edison snatched victory from defeat andsuccessfully demonstrated what it could do. In boast-ing of it he stayed within the truth. Throughout he wascareful and logical and in control; he kept within thebounds of his own knowledge and he made no mistakes.For a time he dreamed expansive dreams and sharedthoughts that were pie in the sky but still pure scienceand a little ahead of their time. Though brash andflamboyant, he was unselfish in research, perhaps moreso than many of us today. When he found what hethought was a secret he approached the experts con-cerning its adaptability to their work and at a busy andtrying time in his career made components and a fewinstruments for them to test and use. In the process hefound himself in competition with those he offered tohelp-the real world of infighting that has always goneon behind the walls of the perfumed garden. And hehandled it well. In a brief bout with the heavyweightLangley, Edison was awarded the first round, althoughhe surely lost in the end to the more persistent andmethodical man. Best of all, in this case he had thewisdom to know what to do when he sensed that his owncreation was a loser: he quit and went on to otherthings.

Were he here today might not Edison produce fromhis bag of tricks the 80-mpg automobile engine or abreakthrough solar energy system? With the confi-dence that buoyed him up in 1879 he surely would havetried. And he probably would have announced suc-cessful solutions long before they were found. Butthese third and fourth generation challenges of a bur-geoning technology seem a different sort from the freshones that Edison naively tackled as a pioneer in theyoung Industrial Age. Indeed, when in later years hetried to improve the automobile storage battery, hefailed to accomplish much in spite of a massive invest-ment of time and resources.

Nor does it seem likely that a young Edison or a daVinci would rise very far were we to drop them down inJPL, or Draper Laboratory, or one of the other vast re-search laboratories of today. It is an ironic fact thatEdison's own creation-the organized research labo-ratory-made his personal style of science obsolete evenin his own time. As he expanded his enterprises to evengreater laboratories, their productivity went steeplydown. Edison's early genius lay in imagination andbreadth and bold initiative, individual qualities thatwhen unrestrained make it possible for a gifted personto create a Mona Lisa but impossible for a committeeof artists to paint one. When he tried to incorporate hisgifted insights or to expand them to a team approach ashe did in later years, the results were always measuredin diminishing returns.

Edison is renowned for perseverance and determi-nation-factors he felt the key to his success. He isfamous for staying at his laboratory bench until solu-tions were finally found to knotty problems-five days

and nights without sleep during an endurance run tofind needed improvements to the phonograph in 1888.But it is hard to picture him hanging in there for thatlong as one of a team of project engineers in 1980. Canwe imagine a young Tom Edison restricted to a limitedaspect of a problem, as is so often done in the divide-and-conquer research strategies of today? WouldEdison have stayed at his desk for five days and nightsto write a subsection of a research proposal or a bid re-sponse? Or for even one day refereeing a paper orproposal from George Westinghouse or Samuel Langleyhad the world of science then been the world of scienceof today? And how would his proposals have faredunder similar peer review?

In most cases the young Edisons of today operateunder tighter restraints than did he, and they must, insome instances, produce far less because of it. Some ofthe more binding of these restrictions come from thedisciplinary bonds with which we constrain modernscience and technology. Is there room left for thepractical genius of an Edison who is far broader than heis deep? Edison at thirty had risen from an ordinarytelegrapher to a technical expert in a narrow but timelyfield, with eighty-nine patents to his credit. In today'sworld he might have come as far, but by then he prob-ably would have been trapped in a box canyon of spe-cialization, under real pressure to delve deeper anddeeper and narrower and narrower, until, as we say ofspecialists today, he might have known everythingabout nothing.

One suspects that Tom Edison would not stay longin most of our laboratories today. He would be soondiscouraged. And he was too much a maverick and alittle hard to supervise. He would probably leave, asin fact he did, to start a company of his own, to blossoma while but then, as he did, to get bogged down in ad-ministration duties and corporate battles, and the moretangled webs of constraints imposed on public researchand private business today. And that seems sad.Somehow we should make a way for a few young TomEdisons to flourish, whether or not they fit the mold inwhich the rest of us have been stamped out.

References and NotesMost of the factual material on which this essay is

based has come from the critical biography, Edison byM. Josephson (McGraw-Hill, New York, 1959), theauthorized biography Edison, His Life and Inventionsby F. L. Dyer, T. C. Martin, and W. H. Meadowcroft(Harper, New York, 1929), and my own paper "ThomasA. Edison and Infrared Astronomy" in J. Hist. Astron.3, 165 (1972). The first of these is a particularly aptresource in judging Edison as a scientist and an excellentand very readable book for any who are interested in amodern appraisal of Edison and his contributions.

This research was sponsored by the Langley-AbbotProgram and Scholarly Studies Program of theSmithsonian Institution and by NASA grant NSG-5345.


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